N80 said:
In my naive and backwards thinking I remain shocked that anyone is willing to take money from other people who did not freely give it for that purpose and the convoluted ways that they try to justify and rationalize the accepting of it. .
If this is really the way you feel, you should take five percent of your gross income, add it to whatever your income tax bill is, and specify that the government return it to farmers to offset the government's subsidization of your family's grocery bill. Whatever part of your present tax bill goes to pay farm subsidies is much cheaper than if you had to pay the full cost of production and distribution of your family's food.
American's pay a ridiculously low percentage of income for their food. This is possible because our government has mandated a "cheap food policy" since WW I.
I am just as philosophically opposed to farm subsidies as anyone on the board, but I know they are necessary. Without subsidies, prices would fluctuate from year to year, even from month to month. Farmers would not, could not, plant at a loss. With subsidies, they are guaranteed a profit, therefore prices are relatively constant, and supplies are always there.
Throw International politics and free-market trading into the mix. If all those here who are opposed to subsidies will take an oath to join me in a protest of government interference next time a president embargoes grain sales, and will swear not to complain when, in the next few years, China comes calling with money in her hand to pay fifteen to twenty percent more for grain than American companies are willing to pay, then I will join you in calling for an end to subsidies.
Here is a pretty good synopsis of what happened in 1972 when the Soviets were running the markets up by making large grain purchases after their wheat crops failed.
"Bread prices were heading toward a Dollar a loaf, and bacon a Dollar a pound. The public was hyped into a frenzy. Consumer, and housewife groups organized, and started boycotts and protests demonstrations at supermarkets throughout the Country, and even in front of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Actually, they were right on target with who they were accusing of price gouging. They had correctly identified the right culprits. However, at that time it had become a National issue, and the American People, then, as today, looked to the Nation's President to preside over the economy and the people's every need and problem.
Under extreme public pressure, but with the strongest objections from his Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, President Richard Nixon issued a presidential executive order, imposing an embargo on all US export grains. In a news interview prior to the embargo, Secretary Butz had told inquisitive reporters that only a fool would impose an embargo on American grain shipments. Butz was right in all respects.
I added the bold, underlined print.
Just a few years later, in 1980, President Carter decided to punish the Soviets for their invasion of Afghanistan by again declaring an embargo on US grain shipments to the USSR. (The Nixon embargo had stopped ALL grain shipments.) This is when other grain producing (particularly soybean) countries such as Argentina and Brazil began taking up the slack. Most countries, then and now, saw the US as a very unreliable supplier and purchase their grain elsewhere if they can get it.
http://www.tropaul.com/dickeyseed.html
I'm usually not real big on cut and paste. The above link is where most of my info came from, although Time and other US news magazines of the period carried these as major stories.
I remember both these events vividly. A few farmers got in on some high prices because of the early seventies frenzy. I think soybeans peaked around $12.00 per bushel. The large grain dealers made most of the profits. I don't blame them. I blame the government and the US public. As I recall, dockworkers threatened to strike and refuse to load the grain if overseas sales continued. So much for a free market.
The Carter grain embargo was one of the stupidest things a US President has ever done. Foreign grain companies bought up a lot of the US grain and sold it to the Soviets at high prices. The US famers were punished for the Soviet invasion. US markets were lost as a result.
Going back to my reply to George: I'm really not trying to pick a fight. I am just trying to make a point. Government policy, including subsidies, has always encouraged over-production, which insures a plentiful supply, but also insures low prices paid to farmers and by consumers. Before the Nixon embargo, Secretery Butz had encouraged farmers to plant "fence row to fence row". There has almost always been, since WWII, some kind of grain storage program administered by the government, whether it is on-farm storage (in bins built with government help) or government rented facilities. I believe the first grain storage program in recorded history was run by a man named Joseph in Egypt.
If you are willing to take the lumps a free market would dole out, if you are willing to allow American farmers to sell their product to the highest bidder, no matter who is starving in America, no matter who we are or are not at war with, no matter what a loaf of bread or a pound of bacon costs, if you are willing to limit imports of food into the US to those who operate under the same environmental and labor restrictions as US farmers, if you are willing to outlaw government sponsored grain storage programs that depress prices, then I am with you.
